A FOSSIL CONTINENT 105 



coming its piscine antecedents and aquatic education. To 

 fit it for this strange amphibious life, the barramunda has 

 both lungs and gills ; it can breathe either air or water at 

 will, or, if it chooses, the two together. Though covered 

 with scales, and most fish-like in outline, it presents points 

 of anatomical resemblance both to salamanders and lizards ; 

 and, as a connecting bond between the North American 

 mud-fish on the one hand and the wonderful lepidosiren 

 on the other, it forms a true member of the long series 

 by which the higher animals generally trace their descent 

 from a remote race of marine ancestors. It is very 

 interesting, therefore, to find that this living fossil link 

 between fish and reptiles should have survived only in 

 the fossil continent, Australia. Everywhere else it has 

 long since been beaten out of the field by its own more de- 

 veloped amphibian descendants ; in Australia alone it still 

 drags on a lonely existence as the last relic of an otherwise 

 long-forgotten and exinct family. 



